An autonomous underwater vehicle from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute just returned from gathering important data about the gulf Oil spill as scientists begin to help figure out how much oil is continuing to leak day by day and what’s happening almost a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

The CBC’s science correspondent Bob McDonald puts the world’s first synthetic cell into perspective.

For the last 35 years industrious beavers have been building a wooden masterpiece that can be seen from outer space. Hidden in the wetlands of Northern Alberta, Canada few have seen the big dam up close.

Canadian scientist Jean Thie of EcoInformatics found the giant beaver dam when he was using Google maps as a tool to study the rate of permafrost melting in Canadian wetlands.

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck near the city of Concepcion, Chile over the weekend is the largest recorded quake in 50 years. Though more people were killed and left homeless after the Haiti earthquake in January, this quake was about 500 times more powerful.

Cameras captured the earthquake as it happened on Saturday.

The earthquake triggered tsunamis up and down the Chilean coast and warnings went out to places as far away as Japan and the west coast of the U.S.

Islands off the coast of Chile felt the full impact of the big temblor as 30-foot tsunami waves crashed through coastal villages, ripping homes apart and sending residents fleeing into the hills. Over 700 people are confirmed dead and more than two million are left homeless as aftershocks continue to keep the nation on edge.

Nearly 4,700 miles away a standing wave or seiche formed in Lake Ponchatrain near New Orleans, Louisiana, believed to be caused by the earthquake in Chile, which ties for the fifth strongest quake recorded since 1900. Chile also experienced the largest quake ever recorded — a 9.5 magnitude in 1960.

It’s every 15 year old boy’s dream — to be able to break things and not get into trouble. At the Fears Lab at University of Oklahoma, scientists and engineers come from all over the world to squeeze, shake, break and shatter all sorts of things. And it’s all in the name of science.

Most people go through work and daily life hoping nothing catastrophic happens. But at this unique laboratory researchers break very big things all the time and measure the results.

San Francisco Bay area teachers are using the 2010 Winter Olympics to teach kids about math and science.

The Silicon Valley Education Foundation teamed up with NBC Learn — the educational arm of NBC News — and the National Science Foundation to provide free lesson plans and video clips.

For more information, visit Lessonopoly.org.

It’s a rare occasion when a scientist can test a theory outside the confines of a laboratory. So when Paul Zak got a call from New Scientist reporter Linda Geddes to take her blood at her wedding, he just couldn’t say no.

Dr. Zak is an ocytoxin researcher who studies social indicators of the love hormone.

Geddes and her groom-to-be offered their wedding (and a few guests) as guinea pigs in this science experiment. The goal? See if oxytocin is released by friends and family witnessing this momentous event or if the hormone release is limited to bride and groom being bonded.

Geddes writes about the experiment in a New Scientist editorial.

Photo by John Hurst, courtesy of New Scientist.

Music is a powerful medium to convey big messages. But few have successfully spun science-themed songs into big hits.

John Boswell has created a new art form, merging the spoken word from superstar scientists with his own original music. And his Symphony of Science has become a big hit on YouTube.

We Are All Connected

A Glorious Dawn

Our Place in the Cosmos

The Unbroken Thread

The federal agencies submitted their budget requests to Congress this week, marking a big moment for all things science. According to preliminary reports about $148 billion of the Presidents full $3.8 trillion budget is heading for scientific research programs.

Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory

The endangered turtle is now settling into her new home at the Hidden Harbor Marine Environmental Project’s “Turtle Hospital”.

At first vets thought she was injured after being hit by a boat and suffering some nerve damage. A new evaluation questions that theory but a full evaluation won’t be complete for a few weeks.

At the hospital Anita swims in a 650 gallon saltwater tank for an hour each day to build up strength and to learn to swim correctly. a hyper-inflated lung prevents her from diving so specialists hand feed her.

She is one of about 5,000 female hawksbill turtles left in the wild. If she can be rehabilitated turtle specialist Tara Vickery says, “She can be 5,001.”

See the turtles swimming live on the “Turtle Hospital” Web cam.

Photos courtesy of Alina Szmant.

Anita the Hawksbill Turtle

Matschie's Tree Kangaroo courtesy of Woodland Park Zoo

Climate negotiations over how to limit carbon dioxide emissions are heating up in Copenhagen. But one other important area negotiators are addressing — how to sequester existing CO2.

Climate sinks — like oceans, forests and permafrost — are natural solutions. But tropical rain forests are falling faster than they can be preserved.

One cute and cuddly (looking) tree kangaroo may become the unwitting ambassador for forest conservation.

Biologist Lisa Dabeck, from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, is the director of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project, which has been able to set aside almost 200,000 acres of pristine forest, where the matschie’s tree kangaroo lives.

Here is the National Geographic tree kangaroo critter cam.

Here is the Lincoln Zoo tree kangaroo critter cam. (Sad news. One of the twin joeys died in September after falling from a branch in the exhibit.)

Nightline followed Dr. Dabeck to New Guinea in search of tree kangaroos. Here’s a link to Dan Harris’ report, which includes a roo named Dan.

The hit ABC television drama Grey’s Anatomy revolves around the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital and follows the lives of surgical residents. Portland, Oregon medical correspondent and author Andrew Holtz wondered where the line between fact and fiction is being drawn when it comes to training future surgeons.

His new book, The Real Grey’s Anatomy follows a group of Oregon Health and Science University surgical residents through their rotations and helps to separate fact from fiction.

Holtz visited Seattle last week and at an appearance sponsored by the Northwest Science Writers Association and the Pacific Science Center, he shared some of those secrets, complete with clips from the TV show.

Here’s what he had to say.

VSS Enterprise

December 7 is a day that will now live in a new kind of infamy. It was the day that Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space company unveiled its new Space Ship 2 and almost blew 800 guests away — in hurricane-force winds — in the process.

Video of the destruction in the Mojave Desert where 105 mph winds ripped through site where VIPs celebrating the new spaceship had to be quickly evacuated.

Photo by: Alan Radecki, MojaveWest Media Works.

The world has gone nuts for five robotic hamsters, called Zhu Zhu Pets. While the cute and cuddly creatures race around on a surfboard, skateboard or in a car, the “it” toy of 2009 has some heavy metals that are within safety limits but beg the question: Do toys need to have these toxic ingredients at all?

Consumer products safety organizations measure the presence of dangerous elements two ways. One uses an XRF scanner to determine if a metal is present at all. The other dissolves the product in a solution to measure the presence and quantity of heavy metals.

New rules go into effect in 2010 that will require Zhu Zhu Pet maker Cepia and other toy manufacturers to follow stricter standards to ensure lead and other heavy metals don’t creep into toys and other goods.

Essco Safety Check, a Redmond, WA company is offering consumers free testing of any household item they bring to the Seattle-area retail location until mid January.

Over the course of the next few weeks we are going to be hearing a lot about carbon emissions–the gas released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and a whole host of other human activities. While the catch-all is called “carbon emissions” they aren’t confined to carbon dioxide gas.

During the Copenhagen Climate Conference we are going to be hearing a lot about what will follow the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty aimed at reducing carbon emissions to help reduce the effects of man-made global warming.

A long-standing debate over younger women getting annual breast cancer screening is reigniting this week, after an independent medical panel changed its recommendations.

Confusion, fear and politics are swirling around the new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations. The task force now recommends shifting from annual to biennial mammograms for all women aged 50-74.

They no longer recommend annual mammograms and they don’t think women under 50 need them at all. By analyzing the available cancer data, they also found that breast self-examination didn’t reduce deaths from breast cancer.

Many groups are upset by the new recommendations and are urging women to continue annual screening like they have for years. Some are even tying this to health care reform and other politics.

Congress will hold hearings next month and even the White House felt compelled to weigh in on this issue.

Moon Water, courtesy of Babaloo.

After a lackluster lunar blast that was barely visible, scientists worried there might not be water on the moon. But after analyzing the mountain of preliminary data, NASA confirmed there is water–in the form of ice–just below the surface of the lunar poles.

This means that the mission was a roaring success and astronauts venturing to the moon may not have to bring their own water.

But how did the water get on the moon? Several scientists have several different theories.

Scientists within the most venerated science organizations in the United States are mounting rebellions against those organizations and their somewhat unified policy on the science of climate change–that it is real and being driven by human activities.

A group of several hundred of 47,000 physicists have unsuccessfully proposed new language for the American Physical Society.
It reads

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human –on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

On Tuesday, the APS decided to let its current national climate policy statement, which was adopted in November 2007 and reaffirmed last year, stand.
It reads:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

In October the 18 leading science organizations sent a letter (PDF) to the U.S. Senate, pledging assistance as the Congress enters deliberations to pass a law that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It reads:

Dear Senator:

As you consider climate change legislation, we, as leaders of scientific
organizations, write to state the consensus scientific view.

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is
occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the
greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.
These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence,
and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of
the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong
evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on
society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the
United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal
states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of
regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the
disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity
of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the
coming decades.

If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions
of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition,
adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already
unavoidable. Adaptation efforts include improved infrastructure design,
more sustainable management of water and other natural resources,
modified agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to
storms, floods, fires and heat waves.

We in the scientific community offer our assistance to inform your
deliberations as you seek to address the impacts of climate change.

Here’s the gist of the kitchen sink hoax. It starts with the end of the Mayan calendar, adds a mystery planet on a crash-course with Earth. Then there is some nonsense about the planets aligning on Dec. 21, 2012, heralding the end of the world. There are about six different pieces to this hoax, which seems to be gaining public momentum.

But the science just doesn’t hold up. Only a few pieces–yes, we will be experiencing a solar maximum and we will be in the galactic plane during this time–are actually true.

Here’s the hoax sorted out. Listen for yourself.

Beer has been flavoring human culture for at least 9,000 years. During that time, the rich brew has transformed and evolved to satisfy the complex palates of the time.

Now, science is a driving force in making beer. And, understanding some of the chemistry can refine color, aroma and flavor.

More Info:
IBU Chart Graph

Dogfish Head Brewery owner Sam Calagione talks ancient beer.

The biggest business lobby in the U.S. is pushing for the EPA to hold a public hearing to debate the science of global warming.

The move, calling for the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st Century, is proving too much for some chamber members, from big utilities to Nike and Johnson & Johnson.

Yesterday, the EPA announced it was moving forward with its plan to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gas, including some 14,000 coal-fired power plants and refineries.

Now the ball is back in the chamber’s court and it’s time for it to decide whether it wants to sue the EPA and try to put the science on trial.

REALscience dissects the petition submitted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which reads like an anti-global warming play book.

Cast of ABC Television's Flash Forward, courtesy of ABC

When the ABC Television series FlashForward pushed the collective consciousness of the world (in the context of the show) forward six months, the book on which the action-adventure series is based flashed up the Amazon book ranking last week.

The content of the show is being closely guarded but to get a sense of what’s coming, look no further than FlashForward, the novel by Robert J. Sawyer.

Or to the real-world particle physics about to start at CERN below Switzerland.

President Obama Addresses UN Climate Summit

In what could be considered his most strongly-worded warning about the threat of climate change, U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations that there is little time to act before permanent environmental damage is irreversible.

In a stirring speech, he called upon Congress, scientists, engineers and citizens to take climate change seriously and work toward solutions to prevent the worst and adapt to the inevitable.

He also announced that the U.S. would begin tracking greenhouse gas emissions across the country and work toward eliminating long-standing fossil fuel subsidies.

Video of President Obama’s UN climate speech:

A Yeast Cell with Synthetic Genes, courtesy of Dr. Pamela Silver, Harvard Medical School

Life is often stranger than fiction. But the direction that biology is heading, synthetic life could be stranger than science fiction.

The emerging field of synthetic biology is moving closer and closer to creating new forms of life in the lab.

Entangled Photons and The Lost Symbol

Avid fiction aficionados have anxiously awaited author Dan Brown’s latest rip-snorting adventure through the mysterious. The Lost Symbol is Brown’s new book, which features the largely unknown field of noetic sciences as a means to move his plot along.

Loosely based on the quantum mechanical principle of entanglement, noetics aims to scientifically understand the mind-connection as a way to discover the unconscious.

The Institute of Noetics has been using physics to drive research that has appeared in bona fide peer-reviewed journals. And, now it’s front-and-center position in Brown’s book will surely push it into public consciousness.

Cotton-top Tamarin, courtesy of University of Wisconsin, photo by Bryce Richter

Music is an important part and key ingredient of our culture. But it might also extend to the animal kingdom.

New research by University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Charles Snowdon has found that while monkeys don’t respond to the likes of human Top 40, they do prefer hearing their own vocalizations.

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma.

Just as we have to monitor our own health, now we have to be more aware of our computer’s health. While high cholesterol and blood pressure aren’t issues for our machines, keeping them free of viruses and worms are.

A new piece of malware, known as the Conficker worm, that has been worming its way into millions of computers for the better part of a year is self-replicating–just like a human virus. And, it is raising new security concerns from experts in law enforcment, science and government.

It’s time for a new sub-discipline of computer science–computer virology.

Route of Ocean Watch Through the Northwest Passage

Ocean Watch, the 64-foot sailboat that also doubles as a voyage of scientific discovery is traveling over the top of North America, in an effort to traverse the rapidly melting yet still dangerous Northwest Passage.

The fabled shipping route has been long sought by explorers as a quick way from Europe to the far East. Thanks to a little help from Mother Nature in the form of climate change the passage is now passable for a few weeks each summer.

And sailors of all levels of experience are flocking to the far north in an effort to be part of an elite group traveling through this largely unexplored area.

Despite annual melting of the sea ice, sailing through the Canadian archipelago is a tricky business.

REALscience continues its coverage of the voyage of Ocean Watch as it makes an attempt to circumnavigate North and South America.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, Google Earth users can now search the moon.

Deep sea coral reefs found just several decades ago off the United States’ southeastern coast hold promise for the discoveries of new species and cures for cancer and other diseases. But the reefs may face danger from energy exploration–whether it’s wind, wave or oil.

The Cassini spacecraft has detected new evidence that one of Saturn’s moons has an ocean beneath its surface.

Enceladus is the sixth largest moon orbiting around the ringed planet Saturn. And, it is one that astronomers believe could harbor some form of microbial life. Now ice and dust particles being spewed from its south pole and detected by Cassini could pave the way for seeing beneath the moon’s surface without having to get close enough to drill.

If runaway global warming gets the better of humanity, then some fairly drastic measures will be needed to stave off the worst effects. That’s where a group of futurists start talking about geoengineering some extreme solutions to the problem.

The latest plan to limit the effects of global warming comes in the form of reducing the strength of hurricanes, which get their power from super-heated sea surface water.

A group, which includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has patented a device that will try to chill the ocean to slow or divert big and damaging hurricanes.

Is the science sound? or is this just another work of fiction?

With the money and influence of one of the richest men behind it, global warming may face a threat from a new force of nature.

Someday, our ceilings and walls might radiate light, illuminating indoor spaces as brightly and evenly as natural daylight. And organic light emitting diodes will shine the way.

Just over a year old, the Apple iTunes App Store is churning out–or rather independent developers are–applications to calculate tips, find restaurants and even play countless games. But there is little for the science-interested smart phone users.

Oh sure, among the tens of thousands of applications currently available there are a handful of sci apps but relatively few. The subject doesn’t even merit its own category.

But several lists have been generated, touting the few useful science applications currently available.

And, we’ve tried to separate the intelligent from the app crap.

Listen here.

A few Select SciApps:
Atoms in a Box
Molecules
EleMints
Starmap
Formul8
Genetic Decoder
Get All the Science
The Extraordinaires

The Extraordinaires–on-demand volunteering for citizen scientists

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

The fabled Northwest passage that claimed the lives of many explorers including Sir John Franklin is now open to small boats for a few weeks each summer thanks to a rapidly changing climate in the high Arctic.

The 64-foot Ocean Watch sailboat is parked behind a 45-mile chunk of sea ice, waiting for open water to be among the first American boats to sail the fabled shipping route.

For the last two summers, ice-free conditions in the Canadian archipelago allowed smooth sailing across the top of North America for the first time. This year’s late and heavy winter is making navigating the passage more difficult this year. But sailors are certain the thick ice will melt enough to allow boats to travel successfully from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.

For daily updates, follow the crew log aboard Ocean Watch.

Map of Northwest Passage

Scientists at the University of California are developing a way for the public to contribute data to research projects using a ubiquitous sensing device – the smart phone. This is a great way to collect data in weeks that would otherwise take years.

It’s called participatory sensing and could be a new wave of citizens helping science.

For 35 years, the Rubik’s Cube has been puzzling people and teaching science. Starting with its inventor, Erno Rubik, first used his “magic cube” to demonstrate three-dimensional design to his architecture students.

Now mathematicians across the world are employing the brightly-colored plastic puzzle to demonstrate algebraic theories to high school students and even use the cube as a model for distributed computing.

Story written and produced by: Lee Fehrenbacher.

Listen here.

The western half of North America has been baking in a heat wave that shattered all-time records while the east coast is shivering in one of the coldest summers on record.

A giant ridge of high pressure and a giant low pressure trough that span the continent set up and became locked, creating a formidable weather pattern that has everyone talking.

And many are wondering whether the record-breaking 103 temperature is the first evidence of global warming in Seattle.

Listen here.

What if those pearly brights could be used for more than eating or charming? Scientists say below the tough white shell of some wisdom and baby teeth is a bounty of adult stem cells.

The government has enlisted the help of furry critters and buzzing bugs to further its military mission of surveillance, defense and even weaponization.

From carrier pigeons that carried encoded messages during World War II to canine suicide bombers, animals have been conscripted into global conflicts for a long time.

Now a new movie–complete with talking guinea pig ninja spies–takes a fanciful look at this covert kingdom. But below the Mission Impossible meets Rin Tin Tin glossy shell of a plot lies some real science.

Listen here.

G-Force Trailer with Interview:

G-Force: Weird Science Creates Animal Spies – Awesome video clips here

On July 19, a big chunk of something smacked into Jupiter, causing a black mark on the gas giant’s surface and raising a lot of questions. Fortunately, the newly upgraded Hubble Telescope was in the neighborhood and pointed its powerful lens at the impact site, giving scientists all sorts of exciting data.

An amateur astronomer from Australia caught the first glimpse of the cosmic collision. Now Anthony Wesley is the newest space rock star.

As Congress tackles one of the most important and expensive revamps of the American health care system, some are attacking the science used to measure how effective treatments are.

This research–known as comparative effectiveness research–does not attempt to ration health care. And, could even be the key to reducing overall health care costs.

President Obama has challenged Congress to resolve health care reform bills currently wending their way through the House and Senate by the fall. In his national news conference on Wednesday, the President endorsed evidence-based medicine as a means to streamline health care.

The longest solar eclipse of the century is slated to cross India and China. A total eclipse will be visible across parts of Asia, including India and China. Expected to last over six and a half minutes, partial solar eclipses can be seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow.

More information available from NASA here.

Whether the 64-foot sailboat Ocean Watch will make it through the fabled Northwest Passage–all indications point to yes, though–remains to be seen. But that’s what what voyages of discovery are all about. Follow the daily updates on the Around the Americas crew log and stay tuned for regular REALscience updates.

We talked to Captain Mark Schrader on Friday and he gave us an report on the first two months of the 25,000-mile circumnavigation of North and South America.

The first major sailing challenge, getting through the stormy Bering Sea, is a distant memory for the seasoned crew, as they prepare for a west-to-east transit of the Northwest Passage.

Listen here.

Photos courtesy of Dave Thoreson: cover, Captain Mark Schrader on ice duty, Ocean Watch crew playing soccer at Barrow sports field.

Every year the brightest science minds head south in July–somewhat like the swallows to Capistrano. This is more like the string theorists to the world Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

There, they meet in an unconference, trade brilliant notions and form collaborations to address real-world problems. Sponsored by Nature and O’Reilly Media, SciFoo ‘09 included a raft of science celebrities, scientists and interested looky-loos.

SciFoo attendee Dr. Shirley Wu was on the scene and gave REALscience a bird’s eye view. Dr. Kirsten “Kiki” Sanford (The Bird’s Brain blog) also gives a little report from SciBarCamp, another science unconference nearby and just before SciFoo. The host of This Week in Science (and good friend of REALscience) talked about “spinning science.”

Most of what happens at SciFoo stays at SciFoo. But a few things trickle out, once the excitement settles. Here’s the REALscience report from last year for reference.

Watch the video Science Foo Camp 2009: by Nature Video

Watch science comedian Brian Malow on Late Night with Craig Ferguson.

Photo of SciFoo courtesy of Duncan Hull

For the full SciFoo ‘09 report listen here.

Karen McComb, a psychologist at the University of Sussex, was inspired to do this study by her own cat, Pepo, who used an urgent, different purr to motivate her to get up and feed him.

There appears to be a huge disconnect between the public and scientists, as evidenced through a Pew Research Center report that came out last week.

Science writer Chris Mooney, the author of Republican War on Science and Stormworld has a new book, titled, Unscientific America, showing just how un-science-focused most Americans are.

While the Pew report and Mooney both paint a gloomy picture of science in the U.S. there is still hope for a science rich future.

Are you science literate? Take this quiz and find out. (it’s only 12 questions.)

Listen here.

Water, water everywhere but no two types are regulated the same way. It’s a mouthful but a new report suggests that consumers know less about expensive bottled water than they do about what comes out of the tap for free.

Now the Government Accounting Office is suggesting better labeling, to differentiate between bottled water which is regulated by the FDA and municipal tap water which is regulated by the EPA. Here is the GAO testimony (PDF), presented to Congress this week.

Americans drank 8.6 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008, twice that which was consumed ten years ago. Bottled water is a big business, worth about $16 billion a year. But few consumers ever know where the water comes from or if it is better for them than drinking tap water. One report found most people believe that bottled water is healthier.

The Washington state Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) program turned ten this year, in the midst of a state budget crisis. The legislature slashed its funding considerably. But the Pacific Science Center, which administers the program, honored science advocates across the state.

They are not teachers but they push for higher levels of science literacy among students and adults.

And the winners are…

Edmund O. Schweitzer
Kim Fowler
Spokane Youth Environmental Conference
Seattle Biomedical Research Institute
Northwest Association for Biomedical Research

Listen here.

Scientists are starting to see jellyfish as a symptom of a sick ocean. More and larger jellyfish blooms are crippling fisheries that are already struggling. They are closing beaches and stinging bathers. But they are also moving toward the poles as the world’s oceans warm.

New research shows the threat to fishing, the monoculture of jellyfish and how the gelatinous critters can be used to gauge overall ocean health.

The crew of Ocean Watch, a 64-foot sailboat on a trip around the Americas is conducting a 13-month jellyfish survey to help fill in some of the scientific gaps in our jellyfish knowledge. They will collect samples–trying not to get stung in the process–and take pictures and video of the colonies they encounter as they hug the coasts of North and South America.

Listen here.
Photo: Jellyfish mosaic, courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/learnscope